


Hello Darkness, My Old Friend

by lizardwriter



Series: Conversations with Death [2]
Category: Carmilla (Web Series), Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen, Humor, catmilla
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-28
Updated: 2015-10-28
Packaged: 2018-04-28 13:18:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5092244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizardwriter/pseuds/lizardwriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set during season 2 ep 30. Death comes to take Mattie away, but Mattie would rather reminisce about the fun she's had over the years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hello Darkness, My Old Friend

**Author's Note:**

> I promise this is funnier than the summary would suggest. You don't have to have read Terry Pratchett to read this (though I highly recommend that you DO read Terry Pratchett).

Mattie blinked hard and looked around. She’d been here before, she just hadn’t really expected to be here again. Not now at any rate. She eyed the tall, cloaked figure beside her and gave him a curt nod. He nodded politely back, the blue glowing orbs where his eyes would have been reflecting off the white of his skeletal structure.

That was it then. Properly dead.

“That Amazonian bitch!” Mattie growled.

I BEG YOUR PARDON?

The voice seemed to completely bypass her ears and yet the words arrived in her head.

“That Lawrence girl. I’d wring her neck if I still had hands on that plane.”

“Foolish _people_.” Mattie said the word as if it left a bad taste in her mouth. “It’s that Laura girl. My sister…” Mattie sighed as she thought of Carmilla. She had played a hand in it, and Mattie knew that she should want to wring _her_ neck as well, but she was worried. Carmilla was playing with things she didn’t understand. Three hundred years wasn’t really so long in the grand scheme of things and Maman, well, she thought in the grand scheme of things.

If Mattie was being honest, it stung more than a little that she no longer played a part in that scheme. Well, it would have stung if such things had mattered anymore. No point, really, anymore. She was dead.

ARE YOU READY?

“Is anyone ever ready for this?”

SOME. YOU HAVE HAD A LONG TIME TO PREPARE.

“I’ve been busy living.”

THAT IS WHAT PEOPLE DO UNTIL THEY DO NOT.

“And then you’re there.”

“I remember,” Mattie replied. She did. The first death had been painful in different ways than this one. It had been _humanly_ painful. It had been tortuous and slow, and then it had been mercifully quick at the end when they’d nicked her heart, and he had been there then, too. He had begun to lead her away, and then he had stopped and frowned (or at least his teeth had clenched), and taken out a small hourglass and tapped it. The sand in it had frozen as the last grain was falling through and blood was filling the top.

She had died that day and then she had been reborn.

“I’ve seen you since.”

HAVE YOU?

“We saw you in Saigon, I remember. That was a decadent time. Carmilla and I painting the town red, drunk on blood, practically giddy with the rush.” Mattie sighed. “Those were the days.”

AH, YES. YOU DID KEEP ME QUITE BUSY.

“Gotta keep you in work.”

MY WORK NEVER ENDS.

Mattie nodded. “I suppose not.” She turned her attention back to the room that was slowly fading around her. Carmilla was storming out of the room promising death and destruction. That was the Carmilla that she liked to see. That was the Carmilla that she had drunk her way through Florence with. None of this love-struck puppy nonsense. “We saw you in Florence, too, I’m pretty sure. Near il Duomo? At least a century back now. No, longer. Funny how time blends together after a while. Well, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that.”

IT PASSES IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re rather ocular-ly challenged, darling.”

I SEE ALL.

“Yes, but your blinking ability is a little lacking without eyelids.”

Death turned towards her and the blue orbs blinked out to blackness and then they reappeared. A moment later, just one blinked out and then reappeared.

“Did you just wink at me?”

If she had been mortal or younger she might have been unnerved by the skeletal smile that met her, but she wasn’t. “Not getting some personality in your old age, are you?”

I AM AGELESS AND TIMELESS.

“Yes, of course.” Mattie sighed again. The room around her should have faded away completely by now, shouldn’t it? But it hadn’t and there was Perry looking shocked. Calculatedly shocked, though, Mattie felt. There was something off with her. Something unnervingly familiar. Something in the way she looked at Mattie sometimes, not with those scared human eyes, but with a knowledge that almost sent a chill down her spine. There was only one being who had actually managed that since she was brought back from the dead, though, and that was…

Oh. But of course.  

So many things slipped into place in Mattie’s head and she shook her head bitterly. How foolish she had been to not see it sooner. Well, she’d paid the price for it.

“Shall we be going, then?”

Death looked at her, then around. He shuffled his feet.

AH, WELL, YOU SEE, I DO BELIEVE…IF YOU WERE GOING TO…

Death reached into his robes and extracted an hourglass. It was old and a little dusty, and Mattie recognized it instantly. Death frowned at it, then tucked it away before Mattie could get a proper look.

IT APPEARS THERE HAVE BEEN…COMPLICATIONS.

“What, again?”

SO IT WOULD SEEM.

“What am I supposed to do now, then?”

THAT IS OUTSIDE OF MY JURISDICTION.

“Helpful,” Mattie muttered.

IT APPEARS THAT I HAVE BUSINESS ELSEWHERE ON CAMPUS.

Mattie grinned. Good girl, Carmilla.

WE SHALL MEET AGAIN, MISS BELMONDE.

“No rush,” Mattie assured him, but when she glanced his way he was gone. She examined the room again, and found it just a touch more solid than she remembered it being a moment before. This had Maman written all over it. She was less than thrilled.

She looked down at her body prone on the floor. “They’d better not just leave me there,” she grumbled, feeling rather inadequate that there was nobody that she could threaten, or, even better, sink her teeth into. It was most unsatisfying.

“Well, then, I guess I’ve got some time to kill. I’m not wasting it with these selfish, immature children.”

Mattie let herself float up out of the room, then out of the building, her eyes scanning for a familiar feline form. She grinned when she saw it. “Good to have you back, sis.”

She settled comfortably on the roof and sat back to enjoy the show. 


End file.
